Screens/Reviews

It Ends with Us
Where: In theatres
What: Movie, 130 mins.
When: Now playing, opened Fri., Aug. 9
Genre: Drama
Rating: NNN (out of 5)
Why you should watch: A somewhat “Hallmark” take on the tough topic of violence against women, with Blake Lively doing her best with limited material — based on a best-selling beach read of the same name.

UGLY THINGS ARE done to or by beautiful people in It Ends with Us, a film that looks like a rom-com but proves ultimately light on both rom and com as it wrestles with big issues in a shiny setting.

From Carhartt to cocktail dresses, Blake Lively is gorgeous as Lily Bloom a radiant young woman who randomly meets a super-stud young neurosurgeon, Ryle Kincaid (Jane the Virgin’s Justin Baldoni, who also directs) on a romantic rooftop — but he’s not quite as he seems. Sound familiar? Lots will in this story based on Colleen Hoover’s best-selling beach read of the same name.

Bloom and Kincaid have a protracted flirtation with comic relief and occasional, cryptic wisdom supplied by the rom-com classic, wise-cracking best friend Alyssa (Jenny Slate), who is also Kincaid’s sister, as well as her light-hearted and loaded husband Marshall (Hasan Minhaj).

Bloom and Kincaid ultimately hook up, even marry, but Bloom’s old flame Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar) shows up to complicate things, reminding her of both a romantic past and childhood trauma. Puzzle pieces in the story are dropped through flashbacks sprinkled throughout the main narrative, and we learn of Bloom’s first-love feelings for Corrigan and see evidence of her father’s violence in the family household, especially towards her mother.

Slowly, Kincaid’s own violent tendencies are revealed, something for which Bloom first makes excuses but then — well, you gotta see the film. We see lots of Baldoni looking super-ripped as he devolves into the buff and brightly lit monster he is revealed to be. Some horrible details are being shared in this film, but it never loses its rom-com veneer, making for a sometimes mismatched setting and story.

Everything is just a little too tidy, from the sets to the people to the storyline. Lively makes the most of the material, which is probably enough, though Baldoni’s perfectly chiselled heel seems lifted from the Card Company’s Christmas shows or a soap opera. Credulity seems strained a little when Bloom is hospitalized because of her injuries and neither staff nor family have alerted the police, but there’s no room for such complexity in It Ends with Us.